Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
SAMUEL SMILESIt is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to “scour the anchor.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse–either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.
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The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
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It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.
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The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know.
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It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.
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Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
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Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
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Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to -day as when they first passed through their authors’ minds ages ago.
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Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
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Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.
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He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.
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Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
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The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
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